Future Scientist - Jennifer Brooks

Jennifer Brooks, a senior at Bethel High School, is on a double track, with career potential in both engineering and physics.

"I'm wavering between majoring in aerospace engineering or physics, such as high-energy particle physics.

A promising start in her career could be work with the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator (CEBAF) in Newport News when it is finished in a couple of years, she says.

"They will be accelerating electrons into nuclear particles to see what happens, to see what new particles can be made," she says. "I would like to work there if I go into a physics career. I'm in a mentorship program at the New Horizons Technical Center, where I'm paired with Dr. Paul Brindzaan, a CEBAF engineer who is working with superconducting magnets.

"That type of work is very interesting and appealing and some of it is above my head, but it's not too bad."

Jennifer says she has always been good in math and the physical sciences, and when in the ninth grade she did a an engineering project that included working with a scientist on a space station at NASA Langley Research Center for a day.

She has been on the school's honor rolls since the beginning of the ninth grade, was the top math student in school in the ninth, 10 and 11 grades, and has won awards as the top student in the second, third and fourth years of Spanish class.

She also received first place in the school science fair with a physics exhibit and has won a number of science awards in biology.

Jennifer is proud of the six-week residential program at the Governor's School during the summer and she is currently taking biochemistry in the New Horizons Governor's school, where she took physics last year.

Jennifer was recently chosen as a semi-finalist in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

"We compete a great deal," she says. "We are gone most weekends."

She is heavily involved in debate and forensics and is captain of both teams.

She is also a member of the Keyettes, a community service organization, and the National Honor Society.

"I want to do the best that I can and my parents and my day coach help me. I want to be the best, if I can."

Jennifer lives with her parents, Peggy and Brian Brooks, in Northampton.

Her hobbies include reading, listening to music, riding horses, walking and biking.